The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee had to remind panel members Tuesday not to display classified documents during public hearings after Rep. Matt Gaetz held up a copy of secret Pentagon slides leaked in an online gamer chat room.
In an exchange during an unclassified committee hearing on national security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, Mr. Gaetz, Florida Republican, pressed Defense Department brass to assess whether China had surpassed the U.S. in hypersonic weapons technology.
Jedidiah P. Royal, the principal deputy assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific security, recommended taking up that discussion behind closed doors in a classified setting.
“It’s sort of been unclassified without our consent,” Mr. Gaetz responded, holding up a copy of a leaked presentation containing a classified assessment of China’s missile capabilities.
Mr. Gaetz said the classified assessment aligned with public warnings from the head of the Indo-Pacific Command that the Chinese advances in hypersonic missiles – which may be capable of evading U.S. missile defenses – pose a “serious” threat to U.S. interests in the region.
“You have been giving us the accurate information,” he told Adm. John Aquilino, the Command’s chief.
But “the truth is we have not made a sufficient investment in hypersonic defense in order to ensure that we have a credible deterrent threat,” Mr. Gaetz said. “How do our littoral combat ships ever get into a fight in a China-Taiwan scenario?”
Adm. Aquilino said that discussion is also better suited for a classified setting.
The exchange prompted Rep. Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican and the Armed Services Committee chairman, to remind lawmakers not to give the leaked information more air time.
“The chair would advise members not to display classified information, whether it’s been leaked or not, in open hearings,” he said.
National security officials are dealing with the fallout from the trove of leaked documents containing sensitive information and some embarrassing details on a variety of topics.
The FBI arrested Airman Jack Teixeira last week at his Massachusetts home on federal charges of unauthorized removal of classified national-defense information.
Mr. Teixeira, an information technology specialist, was assigned to the Guard’s intelligence wing at the time of the leaks.
It is unclear why Mr. Teixeira had access to the highly classified intelligence containing U.S. assessments of Ukrainian military operations, internal political conversations with U.S. allies, and a range of other sensitive national security information restricted to the highest levels of the defense and intelligence communities.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.